The Society for Cinema Studies, founded in 1959, renamed itself the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) in 2002 and redefined its mission as follows:

“우리는 영화, 텔레비전 및 기타 관련된 미디어의 지구적, 국가적, 지역적 순환을 비판적으로 조사하는 것을 촉진한다. 우리 학회의 학자들은 이 모든 미디어를 역사적, 이론적, 문화적, 산업적, 예술적, 심리적 맥락을 포함한 다양한 맥락에 놓는다.” (원문 출전)

Since then, the society has fostered a diverse scholarly community that encompasses moving images, screens, and platforms. This includes not only aesthetic objects derived from standard cinematic modes—such as narrative, experimental, documentary, and animated film—but also various media practices like video games, media installations, data visualization, social media, algorithms, and deep learning. Furthermore, it embraces the latest currents in the humanities, such as post-human studies, the Anthropocene, environmental media, and new materialism.

In this context, the CAU Center for Cinema and Media Studies (CAU-CCMS) was established by the department of film theories at Chung-Ang University’s Graduate School of Advanced Imaging Science(GSAIM). Established in March 2025, the CAU-CCMS is a research organization dedicated to institutionalizing, expanding, and facilitating international exchange in the field of Cinema and Media Studies within Korean academic community. We aim to further our exploration into the history, aesthetics, form, and technology of cinema, and their relationship with various socio-cultural contexts, which are considered the traditional subjects of film studies. Simultaneously, we embrace and expand upon the new research object and methodologies of Cinema and Media Studies, the academic paradigm of the 21st century.

In the 21st century, film studies in North America and Europe have keenly recognized the post-cinematic conditions—where the fundamental elements and boundaries of standard cinema are being dismantled and restructured under the profound influence of digital, networked, and computational media. To reflect on the past and present of cinema from a multi-dimensional perspective, the field has actively engaged with critical media studies, art history, anthropology, STS, and digital humanities. Such an evolution is consistent with the discipline’s history; having emerged from literature and art criticism, film studies established itself as an academic field by reconstructing semiotics, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies during the 1970’s.

In North America and Europe, film studies has established its status as an interdisciplinary arts and humanities discipline, situated not only in independent graduate programs but also within humanities like English and comparative literature, and critical media studies in the social sciences. Through this process, film studies has developed its theories and methodologies, becoming a significant discipline that critically produces knowledge on the forms and functions of images and media, and the relationship between audiovisual experiences and the subject, society, and the world. The shift to 21st-century Cinema and Media Studies is both a succession and a renewal of this historical legacy.

The Center aims to productively apply the compressed and dynamic history of film studies to the Korean academic landscape. We seek to overcome the limitations and devaluation of domestic film studies—which has long been confined to practice-oriented “Department of Theater and Film” or “Colleges of Fine Arts”—and build new networks for knowledge production and distribution. To achieve this, we will continue traditional film studies in a contemporary context while realizing and disseminating the potential of Cinema and Media Studies within the 21st-century humanities, arts, and critical social sciences. For these missions, the Center has established six core research areas to deepen and share scholarly engagement with the forms, aesthetic experiences, and technologies of cinema and media, ultimately building a network of domestic and international collaborators.

the CAU-CCMS is created and operated alongside the graduate students of the GSAIM who share this vision. We are open to all researchers and the public interested in film, media, art, and critical discourse. We look forward to your participation and collaboration.

March 2025 Ji hoon Kim, Director of the Center for Cinema and Media Studies